It is not up to Turkey to decide fate of Nagorno-Karabakh

PanARMENIAN.Net - The passages of time never heal completely when such crimes have been committed and the aggressor refuses to either admit to such barbaric crimes or makes lame excuses all the time. Despite this, Armenia entered talks with Turkey in the hope of solving long held problems and in the need to stabilize the region, The Seoul Times newspaper correspondent Lee Jay Walker said in his article.



"However, leaders in Turkey are still trying to dictate and they are putting pre-conditions down on a conflict which is outside their remit. This applies to the ongoing crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh and the dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Yet this issue involves Armenia and Azerbaijan and it is not up to Turkey to decide the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh. Yes, Turkey, just like the Russian Federation and Iran, and other regional nations and nations who are also concerned about this issue, does have a right to be concerned about regional problems but it must be "an honest broker" and not dictatorial. After all, would Turkey be happy if Armenia stated that Turkey must handover land to the Kurds or return land to the Armenians, Assyrians, and other ethnic groups who were "cleansed" in the early 20th century?

 

It also must be remembered that Turkish military forces are still based throughout northern Cyprus and this is the problem with Turkey. For it appears that the leaders of Turkey suffer from historical amnesia. Also, nationalism is still a potent force within the major institutions of Turkey. Therefore, outside nations need to put more pressure on Turkey in order for "a new chapter" to begin between Armenia and Turkey. The Nagorno-Karabakh issue is indeed serious, however, this dispute is between Armenia and Azerbaijan and the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. Also, the Nagorno-Karabakh crisis must be resolved by all the parties involved and by both regional and global institutions which have a vested interest in solving this complex problem.



The genocide of Armenians and other Christians in 1915 is an historical fact and the same applies to massacres which took place before and after this date. Turkey can never erase this history, however, this nation can start "a fresh chapter" which is based on sincerity and genuine friendship with Armenia," the author of the article concludes.



 The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million. 



The date of the onset of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace. The Armenian Genocide is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.



The Republic of Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, denies the word genocide is an accurate description of the events. In recent years, it has faced repeated calls to accept the events as genocide.



To date, twenty countries and 44 U.S. states have officially recognized the events of the period as genocide, and most genocide scholars and historians accept this view. The Armenian Genocide has been also recognized by influential media including The New York Times, BBC, The Washington Post and The Associated Press. 



The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.



The Nagorno Karabakh Republic (NKR) is a de facto independent republic located in the South Caucasus, bordering by Azerbaijan to the north and east, Iran to the south, and Armenia to the west.



After the Soviet Union established control over the area, in 1923 it formed the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) within the Azerbaijan SSR. In the final years of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan launched an ethnic cleansing which resulted in the Karabakh War that was fought from 1991 to 1994.



Since the ceasefire in 1994, most of Nagorno Karabakh and several regions of Azerbaijan around it (the security zone) remain under the control of Nagorno Karabakh defense army.



Armenia and Azerbaijan have since been holding peace talks mediated by the OSCE Minsk Group.